


Doorways

by Hopetohell



Category: Hellraiser & Related Fandoms, Hellraiser (Movies)
Genre: Mild Gore, Psychological Trauma, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27787609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hopetohell/pseuds/Hopetohell
Summary: If Mike survives, he’s not going to have a very nice time dealing with the aftermath. It doesn’t matter if it was real or not; itfeltreal.





	Doorways

**Author's Note:**

> Predicated upon the conceit that Mike survives the events of Hellraiser: Hellworld.

He dreams. He dreams about the hook, because he can’t help but dream about that now. He hangs, blubbering and gasping, and when they come to take him down it tears a broad valley through him, til he could plunge an arm through his own chest and pat himself on the back. They lay him down on the concrete and whisper words like cicada cries, words that make the ground shiver. Words that call something forth from beyond. 

At first he doesn’t recognize what he’s seeing; it must be shadows. It can’t be hands, but it is. Or rather, claws. They reach up through his ribcage, grasping at the air, claw tips puncturing his skin for leverage as they rip him wider and wider. Until there’s no way he could survive this, he’ll be two halves of a man, split from the sternum down; his last breath is a wet gasp, and that’s it.

And he wakes. He wakes, shivering and sweating. His ribs are bruised and he nearly screams but his hands hurt too, he did this, he did this, there’s a logical explanation. It’s him in the depths of his dreams who has done this; his hands wander without his mind to still them. And if he sees shadows it’s only the product of a tired mind. He has seen terrible things; he is allowed to have a hard time. Right?

_Right?_

Sure, he’s allowed. But he’s got that worry line between his brows that just won’t go away. And he’s just so tired.

He sees strange shapes in his room at night, clothes on the chair turning into a killer like when he was a kid, when he had his night light to keep him company. And he won’t leave a light on, he won’t, because he died in that dream, nearly died buried in the earth, and he will not be defeated by a little darkness.

Winter comes and it seems like he’ll never see the sun again. His breath precedes him, pulls him along under trees, under an open sky that makes him cringe. He hunkers down under shirt and hoodie and jacket and scarf and and and the weight of his thoughts, the weight of waking up alone again, the weight of the calls his friends don’t return. 

He keeps notebooks; it’s supposed to help. Writes down his dreams in a block print that becomes a script becomes a scrawl that’s overtaken by sketches of things that scare him when daylight comes.

Chelsea comes to check on him and sees the notebooks, says _hey, these are really good._ She doesn’t recognize the creatures there because her nightmares are her own; they no longer have anything to do with him. 

She doesn’t know about the hook or the door, or the chattering and clawing he can hear when he stands under the wide sky at night. 

She doesn’t see the bruises on his chest, the elongated handprints, because the one time they tried again he kept his shirt on; when she ran her hands up his chest underneath he was surprised she couldn’t feel the wound there. He can’t see it but can sure as shit feel it; it’s the strangest sensation of his hand being in two places at once.

He wakes, naked, in the park. He wakes sticky and smelling copper, and in the moment between waking and alertness he bares his teeth to the sky. He feels, _god,_ sore and ragged like he’s run ten miles through thorn bushes. He feels the phantom of delicate flesh under his hands, hears the echo of fading cries in his ears. He is chilly and foul-feeling, gritty like grave dirt. 

And he would be concerned about all this, but he is too busy trying to scream around the ragged hole in his chest, a hole that is no longer only in his mind. He cannot understand it, how he’s even still alive, how the margins of the wound pulse with the emergence of so very many claws. 

_I don’t want it, I don’t want it,_ he’s trying to cry but he is soundless, he has no voice, he has no lungs. But they hear him anyway, the owners of these claws, and one replies in a voice like knives, like needles. 

_None of us want it. But in the end, who in this life gets what they want?_


End file.
